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To some degree, we are all creatures of habit. We all have routines that we repeat on a regular basis. What differs between us is how many routines, how much repetition, and how much they do or don’t matter to us. So occasionally, it’s good to step back and evaluate whether our...

Among our industry’s unsung heroes, Walter Moehlenpah takes a close second place behind Cal Jureit. Both built pivotal, pioneering businesses, Jureit through his truss plate and Moehlenpah through his truss machine. Yet Jureit was bound to have the upper hand, as he was the truss...

Back in the fall of 2001, when I was a component manufacturer, Bevan Lines, Director of Spida Machinery, came to a sales meeting in Southaven, MS, to introduce our sales team to the first automated pull saw in the truss industry — the Computerized Spida Saw, better known as the CSS. The...

This message is for the new component manufacturers (CM) who have recently and will shortly be entering the component manufacturing industry for wood trusses or wall panels. First, welcome to the industry – it is very rewarding, but I must caution you about this new endeavor. It is not for...

Years ago, truss design was focused on a simple calculation that determined the final forces that would be considered to be imparted on a truss component. These simple forces were used to determine the design. Things like snow, wind, and building materials weights were generally the only...

The implementation of a Lumber PickLine is a quick study in lean manufacturing tailor-made for each component plant’s building constraints and saws. A Lumber PickLine can semi-automatically feed any linear saw or any component saw. A saw that is fed lumber from a PickLine is a just-in-time...

Backwards compatibility is a feature that allows newer versions of software or hardware to successfully work with older versions. This point came to mind during my recent visit to one of our long-time Vekta customers. This plant in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne, Australia has been operating...

A question everyone has been asking lately – how high will interest rates go this year – got a new possible answer in March. As usual, the predicable became unpredictable again. This time, it is the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and the ensuing danger it posed for the...

Homeowners usually have to deal with obtaining a mortgage when buying a home, but they seldom need to convince a bank to loan them the same amount on a piece of dirt, with promises to make a home worth a mortgage. As the Homeowner/General Contractor, I not only had to qualify for the loan, I had...

A challenge for the component industry is brewing no matter if you are located in an area where new home construction continues to be strong or your market is slowed by the combined effects of high interest rates and stubbornly high inflation. Be it single family or multi-family, new designers...